This course explores the soaring cathedrals, monstrous sculptures, and marvelous images that inspired The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. Beginning with the fourth-century rise of Christian images and ending with the advent of print, it traces how images developed new roles ? and reinvented old ones ? over the course of the Middle Ages. Investigating architecture, sculpture, and manuscripts in their historical contexts, it asks why medieval objects look the way the do and how viewers saw them.